Customs desks are being left unstaffed at one of Britain’s busiest air
terminals despite the arrival of “high-risk” flights from around the world,
according to a watchdog’s report.
Inspectors found no Border Force officers on duty when the flights arrived at
Heathrow airport’s Terminal 5, with hundreds of passengers passing through
customs unchecked.
The report did not name the countries from which the passengers had arrived.
The terminal receives flights from cities in the United States as well as
Brazil, South Africa, India, Kenya and Turkey.
Customs channels should be staffed by officers looking for illegal items such
as drugs and firearms. Border Force officers blamed the government’s
insistence that lengthy queues do not build up at passport control for the
shortage of checks.
The disclosure comes as Britain’s border controls are under renewed scrutiny,
with migrants at Calais launching nightly raids to enter the country through
the Channel tunnel.
The discovery that no one was on duty when high-risk flights were arriving at
Terminal 5 was made during an inspection of Heathrow airport by staff
working for the chief inspector of borders. They spent almost 25 hours
watching 78 officers in the customs channel at Terminal 5 last year.
The findings, released by David Bolt, who took over as chief inspector in May,
raise the prospect that passengers from hundreds of flights are passing
through unchecked every year.
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Top British athletes last night criticised lax drug controls in other
countries after the latest doping allegations to rock athletics appeared to
show widespread abuse.
Sally Gunnell, the former Olympic gold medal-winner, called for nations to
match Britain’s drug-testing regime and said that the latest revelations
risked tarnishing all competitors.
A leak of data from the IAAF, the athletics world governing body, showed that
one third of medals in endurance races at the Olympic Games or world
championships over a ten-year period were won by athletes with suspicious
blood readings or by athletes who were likely to have used doping.
Russia and Kenya were both highlighted, with claims that 80 suspicious
athletes won medals for Russia and 18 for Kenya. “I wish some countries were
as strict as we are in this country,” Gunnell, who won gold in the 400
met

Tens of thousands of middle-class families face fines of hundreds of pounds because they are still receiving child benefit payments.
More than two and a half years after the benefit was first withdrawn from households where one parent is a higher-rate taxpayer, the tax authorities are struggling to cope.
Hundreds of millions of pounds has now been paid to families who should have either opted out or registered for self-assessment to pay the benefit back. The benefit is worth £20.70 a week for the first child and £13.70 for each younger child.
“This policy has been seriously flawed from the beginning,” said Frank Haskew, from the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
“It is wrong in principle and difficult to administer in practice. In an age of independent taxation you should not be using the tax system to claw back a benefit paid to someone else. Many parents are separated and/or don’t